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City Talk: Jazz festival turnout a good argument for arts funding

It's notoriously difficult to estimate the size of crowds in Forsyth Park, but my conservative guess is that more than 1,500 people were enjoying the Savannah Jazz Festival's traditional Thursday blues night when I got there.

It's notoriously difficult to estimate the size of crowds in Forsyth Park, but my conservative guess is that more than 1,500 people were enjoying the Savannah Jazz Festival's traditional Thursday blues night when I got there.

The audience only grew from that point, and there were markedly more folks on hand Friday.

We surely would have had another big crowd on Saturday night if there had not been three inches of rain or so that didn't end until mid-afternoon. Still, there was a dedicated and appreciative group on hand, and the well-kept lawns of Forsyth were much less soggy than I anticipated.

After the party in the park ended, the jam session at Blowin' Smoke BBQ on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard continued until deep into the night, with a stunningly diverse group of musicians joining forces. The players ranged in age from 18 to, well, a whole lot older than that.

The jazz festival is one of those rare events that seems to attract a truly representative sampling of Savannah's population. It's one of the city's signature events that appeals broadly to white and black, young and old.

The festival would not be possible without major funding from the city of Savannah. This year, the city gave the Coastal Jazz Association $65,000 to put on the festival, which works out to about 50 cents per city resident.

That investment seems like a bargain to me, but others who did not attend might feel differently. (By the way, organizers did try to reach a southside audience with a Wednesday night program at Armstrong Atlantic State University, but there was not a good turnout.)

With the city inevitably needing to cut the budget for next year - and maybe for several more years - there will be more scrutiny of allocations for arts organizations.

But I, for one, am hoping that the city will not look to make up a few nickels and dimes by slashing arts funding. The arts and special events are critical for tourism, but, more importantly, public sponsorship of the arts says something about who we are as a city - what we value, what we aspire to.

Plus, within a few months, we'll have a band shell of sorts with the completion of renovations on the old fort in Forsyth Park, which should save arts organizations tens of thousands of dollars each year currently spent on temporary stages.

Believe it or not, that band shell is the belated product of a SPLOST vote from 1993, but in this case late is far better than never.

Let's hope that the Savannah Jazz Festival and other organizations are able to use that new venue for many years to come.

City Talk appears every Sunday and Tuesday. Bill Dawers can be reached at billdawers@comcast.net. Send mail to 10 East 32nd St., Savannah, GA 31401.